Hypocrisy is not spelled 'hypocracy'.
Publicly is not spelled 'publically'.
Accidentally is not spelled 'accidently'. (There's a rule emerging here. The word 'accidental' exists, but the word 'publical' does not, hence the difference.)
Heterosexual is not spelled either 'hetrosexual' or 'hetrasexual'.
Et cetera (which is Latin) is not pronounced 'ex-etra', much less 'ix-etra'.
Co-operate is not pronounced 'coo-woperate'.
Co-incidence is not pronounced 'coo-wincidence'.
Koala is not pronounced 'coo-wahla'.
Thank you.
20 comments:
I have a small but shameful confession to make: I often misspell publicly as publically. I usually realise it's wrong fairly quickly, but it's one of those reflexive spelling mistakes I just seem to make over and over again.
I'm not saying nothing.
3C is correct -- setting oneself up as an expert in these matters is just begging for trouble. But sometimes ah jest cain't he'p mahself.
You go, girl.
I live with someone like you. I know the pain.
My 2 pet hates are:
Torlet - toilet
Orientated - oriented.
Nuffink the matter here.
Youse in Souf 'Straylya just ol' fashioned.
You just wait when its all on mobile fone.
Den no spelin erers.
- barista
Once I went out with a man who said "pacifically" instead of specifically.
Yes, it was very brief.
when the leader of the free world persists in "nukyular", and oh my lord I believe I heard Howard aping him in this just the other day, I can't condemn too many of the infractions of lesser mortals.
Kate - I always misspell 'necessary' (double c), perhaps because of this I use the word far more than is at all necessary.
Ahem. My confession.
I usually spell it "whinging".
saint
I think you should share some of this with the writers of _Kath and Kim_.
but what about the inability to change one's computer system at work from American to Australian English? Has anyone else encountered this -- 'journaling' for 'journalling', etc. it's playing with my mind.
Torlet doesn't bother me -- I live in SA where people have a lot of trouble with L generally; nobody can pronounce a terminal L ('Jiw is reaw iw', as a bemused NSW friend once put it, to which I maturely replied 'Skewl, pewl, fewl and Newcassle so nyerdy nyer').
I think when it's slang you're allowed to make up the spelling. I write 'whingeing' because to my eyes 'whinging' looks as if it should rhyme with 'singing'.
Yes, I saw Turnbull. I was shocked. Maybe he was trying so hard not to say it that he said it -- Freud rules.
Cooperate without hyphen, yes, absolutely, but I think that's what the problem is -- it's still pronounced as in 'co' and 'operate', but people see two o's together and think they should pronounce it 'oo'.
E -- I think the Kath and Kim people are way ahead of me.
I once knew the whole phonetic alphabet -- not the radio one, the little symbols denoting sounds that can be found in dictionaries. I hate it when I forget things I used to know.
For years my pet peeve has been "haitch". I fear it is becoming standard usage.
An otherwise brilliant American blogger continually writes "hoards" when she means "hordes". It makes me grind my teeth.
I wish I hadn't come here, I'm now going to proof-read my last blog post. I hate American English as in fetus because now I can't remember where the 'o' goes.
I dislike 'specifically' becoming 'pacifically' - a colleague has been saying this for 20 years.
A former teacher of mine told me that he reached age 55 without realising that 'melancholy' is not pronounced 'mellan-chollee'.
hc, do you mean 'chollee' as in 'cheese'? And not 'kollee' as in 'cauliflower'? Mmmm cauliflower cheese....
I recently spelt publicly, 'publically', I thought it didn't look right, but I still had to check in the dictionary.
Then there was the time I spoke to an international operator who insisted on saying 'haitch', I commented to the person next to me that she should be saying 'aitch', when said operator stopped talking to the other operator in America to ask me ('caller')what I said, I demurred from answering. Australian operator continued to spell to American operator, spitting out 'haitch' with such venom that I fairly shrivelled on the spot. That's what I got for being all passive aggressively superior-like, but I share zoot's pain. Still I grew up with having an Uncle 'Aitch', because he hates his name, 'Henry'.
For years I often heard the theory that 'haitch' was ramapant among former pupils at Catholic schools who'd been very deliberately taught to say Haitch by Irish nuns, but I scorned this as blind anti-Catholic prejudice until a friend who'd been there told me that, in her case at least, it was true. Now I don't know what to think, except that it makes me grind my teeth like Tigtog's whenever I hear it on radio or TV. Again let me stress: it only bothers me when it's public-sphere usage, where people have a professional responsibility to try to get this sort of stuff right.
ix-nay on the ix-cetera, eh?
I have decided that I must learn to spell correctly after realising how much pain my poor spelling can cause others.
However, it is not easy for those of us who were never taught and have no natural talent for it. Poor spelling never looks odd to me until Word puts a little red line underneath the word in question.
Somehow I still get annoyed with others who mispronounce words. I, of all people, should have more sympathy.
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